I have been playing around with this recipe from chow.comfor a week or two now. Whilst a very fine recipe for chilli verde, I tweaked it a degree for our own tastes.

First of all we changed the cut of chicken. Neither of us are dark meat fans so we opted for chicken breast. We found the original recipe far too cinnamon flavoured so dropped that element altogether. I’ve never seen Aleppo pepper so a little online investigation seems to point out standard chilli powder is fine. We also dropped the potato.

I love this recipes great flexibility and ease. You could happily alter the mix of chillis to suit your own tastes. I should highlight that the following recipe makes a medium heat. I recommend including all of the chillis, there is no need to de-seed them in my opinion.

Chilli verde ingredients (serves 4):

1.5lb diced chicken
salt, pepper, flour to coat chicken
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
1 medium sized red onion coarsely chopped
2 anaheim chillis coarsely chopped
2 pasilla (poblano) chillis coarsely chopped
2 jalapeno chillis finely chopped
1 can low sodium chicken broth
10 tomatillos, husked and quartered
2 tb fresh oregano, finely chopped
1 tb chilli powder
1 tb cumin
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
handful of chopped cilantro to taste

Firstly season the chicken with salt and pepper. Coat the chicken in flour and fry over a medium heat:

Whilst the chicken cooks, in a large stock pot saute the onions and garlic:

When the onions and garlic have softened (5 minutes) add in the chopped chillis:

The chillis should be fried with the garlic and onions until they soften (3-4 minutes). By now the chicken should be nicely cooked:

Now add the chicken to the garlic/onion/chilli mix and cook together for a minute:

Almost there! Finally add the remainder of the ingredients (except cilantro). This includes the tomatillos, chilli powder, smoked paprika, cumin, fresh oregano and chicken stock:

Stir and bring to a boil. Now reduce the heat to a low simmer and cover the pot. The verde should now be left (covered) for at least one hour to simmer. Be sure to check in every so often and give the mixture a good old stir (to prevent sticking).

After an hour remove the lid and let simmer for another 15-30 minutes, to allow the verde to thicken. Once thickened stir in the chopped cilantro. You should then have something like this:

We like to have our chilli verde wrapped in tortilla’s, a little homemade guacamole, salsa and black breans:

The original recipe itself calls for more oil than I prefer and 6 serrano peppers. If you value your life like me you will want to dial that level of heat down a notch. This recipe is quick, easy, incredibly aromtic and very tasty.

For this recipe you will need:

Thai basil chicken recipe (serves 3-4)

1lb of chicken cut into thin 1-2 inch long strips.
3-4 tbsp vegetable or canola oil
2 serrano (standard green) chillis roughly chopped
4 cloves finely minced garlic
1 red pepper cut into inch squares
1 green pepper cut into inch squares
1 medium onion cut into chunks
1 can of shredded bamboo shoots
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp good quality fish sauce
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp corn flour
2-3 tbsp water
40 basil leaves (yes 40)
cilantro and/or fresh mint optional

First of all fry the chicken in the oil at a high heat.

Dont let the chicken cook too long, you only need to colour the meat (not brown). If you chop the meat into thin long strips it will cook pretty darned fast, easily within 5 minutes.

Next throw the chillis and garlic in with the chicken. The overall aroma and flavor is heavily dependant on chillis. If you really must go milder, try without the chilli seeds and inner chilli flesh. Stir fry for two minutes.

Next add the fish sauce and soy sauce. After stirring this in your kitchen should start to coime to life with the aroma of South East Asia!

Good quality fish sauce is important, a local asian supermarket will have some. I believe the preferred Thai brand is “Golden boy”. Don’t worry if you think the fish sauce smell is overpowering. It is a key ingredient in the subtle layered flavours of thai food. You won’t taste what you smell in the final dish. Trust me!

The liquids with the oil should quickly emulsify into a thickening sauce:

After the sauce thickens a little (2 minutes) add the Oyster sauce and sugar and stir well. Cook for a further minute and then add the vegetables (except the basil). The original recipe called for only red peppers but we found this and just chicken a little boring. Based on having the dish many times in different restaurants anything crunchy goes well. In my version I added green peppers, onions and bamboo shoots. I’m sure if you have different tastes plenty of other things will work great as well such as water chestnuts, shredded carrot and so forth.

The trick here is to not overcook the veggies. They really only need heating and coating in the sauce. You want to retain as much crunch as possible for your plate.

Stir fry for another minute or two, let the sauce coat all the vegetables evenly.

Once coated add the basil leaves. If you can get thai basil leaves, great! If not basil leaves from your local store will suffice, the fresher the better.

Stir the leaves in well. Dissolve the flour with the water and add to the pan to help thicken the sauce:

Continue stirring until the basil leaves have wilted nicely (another minute or two). You should have something resembling:

And there you have it, serve with fragrant jasmine rice (and in our case a nice red to hold up to the chilli kick):

You will notice I have cilantro and mint as optional extra’s. From time to time I like to fold a handful of either in just before serving. They add a nice zing.

The recipe itself is extremely versatile and can withstand a degree of tweaking. I find it’s key to ensure the soy, fish sauce and oyster sauce are kept to the same measurements. Similarly I like an equal amount of chopped chilli to garlic. None of these elements should be left out either. These being balanced well the rest of the dish can be thrown together to your own personal tastes.

I’ve tasted spuds ranging from too hard, not crispy enough, too oily all the way through to totally flavourless. After a few years of hard work (and spending too much in restaurants), I think I have perfected the art of roasting spuds.

There are a several key steps you need to master in order to roast a great tater. You might thing I’m going OTT here, but a great roast spud is revelatory.

IMPORTANT TIP 1: Use quality ingredients!

A 20lb bag of value potatoes and crappy value vegetable oil will not make a premium roast potato. Fact! These days I use a decent extra virgin olive oil, fresh rosemary (sometimes ground like shown ), garlic, sea salt and a good russet potato.

Firstly peel your spuds. I generally figure 1.5-2 medium sized tatties per person. Next you need to cut into segments. The smaller your pieces the shorter the cooking time and crunchier the final product. I like fairly small pieces, nothing much bigger than a golf ball.

Next salt a pan of water and heat so it hits a ‘rolling boil’. This means when you add items to the pan it will continue to boil away. Plunge your peeled and chopped spuds into the water and boil away.

IMPORTANT TIP 2: Easy on the oil!

While the water boils up you will need to take an oven tray or oven friendly dish and line with foil. Add a thin layer of olive oil to the tray or dish. Too much oil will mean your spuds will spend their cooking time submerged under a layer of fat - they won’t crisp! All we want is a very thin coating on the spuds, that with the salt (see below) are all they need to crisp up nicely.

Once your oil is ready, throw a few peeled cloves of garlic into the oil. If you had fresh rosemary (or other herbs), also throw some sprigs on now as well.

Place this in the oven for a few minutes so the garlic (and fresh herbs if you have them) starts to infuse the olive oil.

While the oil heats up, you need to par boil the taters until they start to soften. If you boil too much they will disintegrate in the next step (yep, I have done that once or twice). If you dont boil enough the final roastie will be hard and not very pleasant.

I generally let them boil for 5 minutes and get a sharp knife, repeatedly stabbing to test. Once you can easily poke beneath the surface by a half centimetre they are done.

Drain the water from the spuds (if your cooking veggies later, you might want to reserve this water for cooking with!) and return the pan to the stove. Steam off any excess water from the spud taking care to ensure the spuds don’t stick to the dry pan.

IMPORTANT TIP 3: Break those spuds!

When the spuds look dry take off the heat and place a lid on the pan. Next shake the pan vigorously for a few seconds. Take the lid off and check the edges of the spuds are all broken. It’s at this point if you boiled too long you will get a big mush.

Hopefully you got it spot on and you have nice fluffy spuds with broken edges. Why broken edges? This is what makes the perfect crispy texture we want for the spud later on.

Next transfer the spuds to the heated tray of oil. Using a spoon or basting brush, toss the potatoes in the oil making sure they are evenly covered. If you did not add enough oil earlier feel freee to add some more, just remember not to drown them!

Next add your seasonings. I love rosemary and so I use fresh rosemary when available. Today I only have ground rosemary which is still great. Sprinkle the spuds with your seasoning plus salt and pepper.

I find sea salt to be an excellent alternative to standard table salt. It also helps to crisp up the spuds as the cook.

Place the spuds into the pre heated oven and leave, that’s it! You don’t need to turn them or mess around. You can if you like it won’t hurt much.

Depending on the size of the spuds and the heat of your oven, they can take anywhere from 45 -> 90 mins. I like a real crispy tater and generally give them at least an hour.

C’est voila. We had ours yeterday with some coho salmon, fresh green beans and chilled anchovy tapenade. Hmmm.